Scottish Nature Photography Awards 2014

07th October 2015

It's nice to get a little bit of recognition and I must confess I do not enter that many competitions but my love for Scotland persuaded me to enter last year's Scottish Nature Photography Awards.
I was lucky enough to get two runners up awards in the Wildlife Portrait section.
It's also rather nice to see any images in print and the book that the competition organisers produce does the images proud I think.

Here they are as they appear in the book. Apologies but a simple set of iPhone pictures so quality pretty poor but just to show them in situ.

And here are the original images.
Firstly a Mountain Hare in his snowy habitat. An image that took many hours of patient stalking to get and this was taken on a 24-70mm wide angle zoom at 24mm so as close as I have ever been to a hare in it's habitat and an amazingly close experience in a desolate and snowy scottish mountain glen a long way from my 4x4 and any other humans. I had always wanted to be able to show this amazing animal in the world in which they spend their lives. Never living underground they cope with the subzero temperatures and howling winds in what is the bleakest landscape and weather in the UK. A truly amazing creature that needs our support to survive.

Secondly the Red Deer in a blizzard. Taken in a genuine whiteout where I had about 5 inches of snow fall in an hour or so, in the mountains on the Alvie Estate above Aviemore in the Cairngorms. I just love the almost arrogant pose of the stag as he glances back at the idiot (me!) as I struggle in the blizzard to keep everything warm and dry as myself and the 500mm lens start to disappear under the snow!!

Here is a link to the awards page and big congratulations to Johan Siggesson who won the overall award with an image of a Puffin. Ironically I was actually on the hill with Johan on the day I took my Red Deer stag image !! A small world !!

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